System and method for suppressing out-of-order side-effect alarms in heterogeneous integrated wide area data and telecommunication networks

Abstract

A method and apparatus for suppressing side effect alarms in a network communication system that arrive out of order, based on state change and the alarm reporting history of logical managed objects, such as user connections, is disclosed. State information is maintained for each of a plurality of interested logical managed objects that represent user connections, comprising parent object state, primary state, and secondary state. The parent object state is OK if all parent objects (lines, ports, etc.) of the connection are functioning properly, and FAIL otherwise. The primary connection state is OK if the entire connection is functioning properly. The secondary state or A-bit state is FAIL if a failure at one subnetwork is detected by other subnetworks. The system also maintains information indicating the last generated alarm for each interested logical managed object. A new state of each interested logical managed object is computed when alarms on its containing physical managed objects or associating logical managed objects have been reported. The method then decides whether to report or suppress the alarms, based on a lookup operation using a decision table. If an alarm is suspected of being a side-effect alarm, based on selected conditions, alarm information is placed in a queue to await the arrival of a second, related alarm that confirms that the first alarm was a side-effect alarm, and the side-effect alarm is then suppressed.